- Judge approves Gardner’s request to have former Greitens co-counsel represent her during removal proceedings KSDK.com
- Kim Gardner engages former Harvey Weinstein lawyer to fight AG’s attempt to remove her St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- Deadline for Kim Gardner to respond to ousting effort today KTVI Fox 2 St. Louis
- Soros-backed Kim Gardner needs to be impeached ‘yesterday’: Leo Terrell Fox News
- Kim Gardner hires former Harvey Weinstein lawyer Ronald Sullivan in case brought by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey – St. Louis Business Journal The Business Journals
Tag Archives: Greitens
Tables turn in Missouri Senate race after Schmitt takes GOP lead over Greitens, Hartzler
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Attorney General Eric Schmitt leads the front-runners with a 12-point edge in the GOP primary race for the open Senate seat in Missouri, according to a new poll.
The Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey showed that the tables have turned in the Republican primary. Schmitt took the lead in the race, receiving 33% of the votes. U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler came in second with 21%, and Eric Greitens fell behind with only 16%, a 10% drop in his support from the previous month.
Greitens’ numbers are significantly lower than a June poll conducted by Emerson that found he was leading in the race among 26% of GOP voters, with Schmitt at 20%, and Hartzler receiving 16%.
The poll found that among the three front-runners, likely Republican voters in Missouri had the least favorable opinion of Greitens. It concluded that 61% have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of the former governor, who resigned in 2018 after sexual assault and campaign fraud allegations.
MISSOURI GOP SENATE SHOWDOWN: GREITENS RESIST CALLS TO DROP OUT AFTER ABUSE ALLEGATIONS
While Greiten’s numbers decline, 61% of Republican Missourians said they have a somewhat or very favorable view of his opponent Eric Schmitt, the candidate that recently received a prominent endorsement from Arkansas gubernatorial nominee Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Attorney General Eric Schmitt takes the lead in Missouri GOP Senate primary.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
According to the poll, 41% of GOP voters said they would be more likely to vote for candidates if they were endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
Executive director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball said a Trump endorsement “could allow Schmitt to secure his lead or provide a last-minute game changer for Greitens if Trump were to get involved in the race.”
MISSOURI GOP PRIMARY BATTLE: SCHMITT PICKS UP ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE ENDORSEMENT
In the Democratic primary, the poll showed that 39% of likely Democrat voters in Missouri plan on voting for Trudy Busch Valentine in the primary, but a close 35% support opponent Lucas Kunce, with 22% still undecided.
GOP Senate primary candidate Eric Greitens is the former governor of Missouri.
(Nathan Papes/The Springfield News-Leader via AP, File)
The most important issue to Republican voters in Missouri was the economy (57%), a number that is down 4% from June. Inflation hit a 40-year-high in June, with speculation rising that the economy will soon enter into a recession if it hasn’t already.
Democratic voters in Missouri believe that abortion trumps the economy as the number one issue the country is facing, following the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, effectively declaring that abortion access is not a constitutional right for all Americans and returning abortion regulations to the states.
Missouri Democrats ranked abortion as the leading issue at 27% of the vote, according to the Emerson poll, while only 19% of likely Democratic voters said the economy was the most important issue.
Anheuser-Busch heiress Trudy Busch Valentine is the most favored Democrat primary candidate for the Missouri Senate, according to poll.
(Trudy Busch Valentine via Trudy Busch Valentine Youtube)
Among Republican voters, President Joe Biden had 17% approval, while 73% of Democrat primary voters in the state expressed approval of his presidency.
The president’s national approval rating hit an all-time low of 31% in early July, as many Democrats express they don’t want him seeking re-election 2024.
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Current GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., announced last year that he would not be seeking re-election in 2022, leaving the seat open and vulnerable in the midterms. The Missouri primary election will take place on Aug. 2, 2022.
Emerson College/The Hill Survey was conducted July 21-23, 2022. The sample consisted of Republican and Democratic likely voters in Missouri, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
GOP Senate candidate Eric Greitens slammed for ‘RINO hunting’ campaign ad
In the ad, Greitens stands outside a home with a team of others dressed in tactical gear and whispers: “The RINO feeds on corruption and is marked by the stripes of cowardice.”
The tactical team then busts open the door, detonates smoke bombs inside and storms through with their guns drawn.
“Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit,” Greitens says, standing inside an apparently empty house surrounded by smoke. “There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit and it doesn’t expire — until we save our country.”
The ad was posted Monday morning to various social media accounts belonging to Greitens and his Senate campaign.
The video was removed from Facebook “for violating our policies prohibiting violence and incitement,” according to Facebook spokesman Andy Stone, but the video remained on Twitter and YouTube as of early Monday afternoon.
About four hours after Greitens posted the video, Twitter placed a warning label over the tweet, saying it “violated the Twitter Rules about abusive behavior.” However, Twitter has left the video up with a message that the company “determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.” A representative for YouTube did not return a request for comment.
The ad comes amid a spate of political violence and threats against public officials, as well as a general environment of vitriol within conservative circles between those who believe former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged and those in the GOP who have spoken out against those claims.
The Washington Post last year tracked how election administrators in at least 17 states received threats of violence in the months after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, often sparked directly by comments from Trump.
On Sunday, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) shared that his wife had received a letter in the mail threatening to execute his family, including their 5-month-old baby. Kinzinger is one of 10 Republicans who broke with their party last year and voted to impeach Trump, and has since been criticized by Trump and his allies as a “RINO.”
Kinzinger has also drawn vitriol from Republican voters and members of his own party for being one of two GOP lawmakers to serve on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
“There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” Kinzinger said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, speaking about the death threats he and others have received. “And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”
Greitens’s campaign ad also comes after a spate of high-profile mass shootings, including at a Buffalo grocery store on May 14, where 10 people were killed, and in Uvalde, Tex., where 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School on May 24. Those and other shootings prompted protests across the country against gun violence and have sparked some bipartisan conversations in Congress about gun safety legislation.
The ad was swiftly criticized by those who warned that Greitens’s video could lead to real-world violence.
“This is sociopathic,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.). “You’re going to get someone killed.”
Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison called the video “radical.. extreme… unhinged.” Former congressman Joe Walsh, who left the Republican Party over his criticisms of Trump, said he was not surprised by the ad and called out those in the GOP who still supported Trump.
“To every Republican today who’s thinking about criticizing this ad: You cannot criticize this & still support Trump,” Walsh tweeted. “There’s ZERO difference between Eric Greitens & Donald Trump. In fact, your cowardly embrace of Trump directly led to Greitens, and [Marjorie Taylor] Greene, and [Lauren] Boebert, and…”
Others pointed out Greitens’s own history of violence. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, has been accused by his ex-wife of domestic violence, including physical violence toward their children. He has denied those allegations.
Greitens resigned as governor of Missouri in 2018 in disgrace after an affair with a former hairdresser that included allegations of abuse and blackmail. He launched his campaign for Senate last year after Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) announced that he would retire at the end of his term.
Representatives for the Republican Party, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did not respond to requests for comment.
Cristiano Lima and Rosalind Helderman contributed to this report.